Bonuses cut but base pay rises

The sharemarket might have rebounded dramatically from the low levels reached in March, but that did little to bolster the pay packets of many listed mid-tier stockbrokers in the past year.

The bonus received by
Austock
chief executive
Tim Boyle
was only a quarter of the $240,625 he took home in 2008. Austock was hit hard by a lack of mergers and acquisitions as well as a dearth of public floats before June 30. The company reported a net loss of $20.9 million. Still the board made sure Boyle wasn't crying poor, boosting his base salary by over $75,000, so that his final packet was $758,137 compared with $587,572 a year ago.

Corporate finance director Jeremy Kirkwood managed only a $125,375 bonus compared with the $390,625 he took home last year. But Kirkwood's base pay got a handy $63,000 boost to $363,000, taking his total pay packet to $570,208 versus $825,360 last year. Things weren't any better for the senior executive team, many of whom went backwards on share-based payments expensed in previous years.

It was the same at the Perth-based Euroz, where the total pay almost halved to $15 million as profits fell 75 per cent to $10.3 million.